The issue in this piece is not about women’s breast as the title may erroneously let believe; but actually what the children make of them. We are deep into breast-feeding week. One may refer to this as another of those hackneyed days we are so often used to. It is evidently so, and the Ministry of Public Health is wont on giving this one some substance; some real substance, hence the multifarious initiatives being taken to revisit the stereotypes so often associated with breast-feeding. Take the ideas of a few people randomly chosen the other day on television to give their opinion on breast-feeding. Many of the reactions certainly sent health professionals laughing off their brains.

But these views cannot be undermined in the overall strategy to address the question of breast-feeding, hence the necessity to pay some attention to these firm beliefs which, in more ways than one, are largely responsible for the scandalous lag in attaining one of the essential, if not, one of the most important Millennium Development Goals which the UN Summit of Heads of State of September 2000 in New York, set out to achieve. Infant mortality rates are still embarrassingly high and one of the reasons for the poor health of infants is the refusal by mothers to give this cherished God-given gift, called breast milk, to their babies. From the number of things Cameroonians were saying the other day about breast-feeding, there is little to hope for by way of a radical change of attitudes to meet the specific MDG on infant mortality. Statistics from the Ministry of Public Health indicate that there has been some increase in awareness over the issue observed in the past few years, but the rates are not such as to have any good news to write home about.

The whole question now is about engaging better communication strategies to get the message through. But one of the main handicaps is the fact that those of child-bearing age seem to the most reticent to the message of the virtues of breast milk. In the urban areas, apart from the claim that working-class women may not always have enough time to be around their babies, there is a new argument, and not the easiest one to throw away. It is the fear of sagging breast. Many mothers fear that breast-feeding their babies will cause the shrinking of their breasts and eventually reduce their beauty in the eyes of their husbands or loved ones. Even the most reliable scientific arguments have not deterred them from such beliefs. In the rural areas, the question of breast aesthetics may not be the issue, but mothers who often have to go to far-flung locations to work on farms or fetch food, are never so near their babies. And even when they can raise enough money to afford artificial milk, hygienic conditions are never so reliable, thus making the use of such artificial milk a new source of infection for the young babies.

The economic environment is not the least of the paradoxes. How can one explain the fact that it is in an extremely difficult financial situation whereby money is increasingly difficult to come by that mothers opt for artificial milk which is not even so easy to afford.

The choice between breast milk (which is not only free but disease-free) and artificial milk (with all the complications it is likely to bring to the bay) is easy to make. In a cash-strapped situation encountered by most Cameroonian families today, it is the safest way out. Moreover, the quintessential role of the breast in the human body is to produce milk for babies, with the aesthetic role only secondary.